Famous Reviews eBook

So much for the extravagances of this lady.—­With
equal sincerity, and with greater pleasure, we bear
testimony to her talents, her good sense, and her
real piety. There occurs every now and then in
her productions, very original, and very profound
observations. Her advice is very often characterised
by the most amiable good sense, and conveyed in the
most brilliant and inviting style. If, instead
of belonging to a trumpery gospel faction, she had
only watched over those great points of religion in
which the hearts of every sect of Christians are interested,
she would have been one of the most useful and valuable
writers of her day. As it is, every man would
wish his wife and his children to read Caelebs;—­watching
himself its effects;—­separating the piety
from the puerility;—­and showing that it
is very possible to be a good Christian, without degrading
the human understanding to the trash and folly of
Methodism.

It would be scarcely possible for a man of Mr. Southey’s
talents and acquirements to write two volumes so large
as those before us, which should be wholly destitute
of information and amusement. Yet we do not remember
to have read with so little satisfaction any equal
quantity of matter, written by any man of real abilities.
We have, for some time past, observed with great regret
the strange infatuation which leads the Poet Laureate
to abandon those departments of literature in which
he might excel, and to lecture the public on sciences
of which he has still the very alphabet to learn.
He has now, we think, done his worst. The subject
which he has at last undertaken to treat is one which
demands all the highest intellectual and moral qualities
of a philosophical statesman, an understanding at
once comprehensive and acute, a heart at once upright
and charitable. Mr. Southey brings to the task
two faculties which were never, we believe, vouchsafed
in measure so copious to any human being, the faculty
of believing without a reason, and the faculty of
hating without a provocation.

It is, indeed, most extraordinary, that a mind like
Mr. Southey’s, a mind richly endowed in many
respects by nature, and highly cultivated by study,
a mind which has exercised considerable influence on
the most enlightened generation of the most enlightened
people that ever existed, should be utterly destitute
of the power of discerning truth from falsehood.
Yet such is the fact. Government is to Mr. Southey
one of the fine arts. He judges of a theory,
of a public measure, of a religion or a political
party, of a peace or a war, as men judge of a picture
or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination.
A chain of associations is to him what a chain of
reasoning is to other men; and what he calls his opinions
are in fact merely his tastes....